Wild Ride (34 page)

“I think the D-gun has its place here, we're going to need it. And you. Your expertise.”

“Thank you.”

Okay, it was good he had a future, but he'd prefer not to spend it all trying to coax Weaver out of a snit. “How long are you going to be mad at me?”

Weaver stopped and turned to face him. “You think you know it all. You don't. You don't even know what you are.”

Ethan held up a hand. “No, I'm learning that. The Hunter thing, what I can do, I'm still finding that out. This morning—”

“Not the Hunter thing.” Weaver bit her lip, as if she was trying to decide something. “You don't show a lot of emotion, but when we have sex—”

I'm gonna hate this
, Ethan thought.

“—your eyes glow. Red. The first time I was startled but we were in the middle of things, and I thought maybe I imagined it, and then it happened again but by then I knew you weren't a demon, but . . . that's not normal.”

“Great,” Ethan said, trying to wrap his head around that one. His eyes glowed red. Probably should keep his eyes closed during sex in the future.

Weaver frowned at him, annoyed again. “You don't seem surprised.”

“I'm surprised. But I've seen Mab's eyes glow, so—”

“You had sex with Mab?”

“No.
No.
” Women. He watched her narrowed eyes and said, “No, no.
Never
. Her eyes flash when she gets angry. Almost like a person possessed by a demon. But she's not a demon. And neither am I.”
But I am different
, he thought.

“So what are you?” Weaver demanded. “And by the way, this is another thing I haven't told Ursula, so you're welcome. But you have to admit, sensing demons behind doors, seeing in the dark, francium in the blood, eyes glowing . . . You're not scoring high on the ‘not demon' chart. I believe in you, but I don't see anybody else giving you a pass on this.”

They came out onto the midway near the Keep lake. “It's okay,” Ethan said. “I figure it's like my ability to sense demons, to see better in the dark—part of being Guardia. Maybe Guardia are anti-demons. Yin and yang. You know. A little outside the bell curve.”

“A little? Do Glenda's eyes glow? You must have seen her mad plenty of times.”

That gave Ethan pause. “Never saw them do it.”

“Gus's? Delpha's? Young Fred's?”

“No, but . . . Okay, so maybe it's not a Guardia thing.”

A long silence played out, and Ethan kept walking.

“I've got to take you in,” Weaver finally said.

“No.”

“Look, Ursula plays dirty. She's talking about erasing your identity if you don't cooperate. Your disability pay will be gone. No record of your service in the Army at all. No record of you. You won't exist anymore.”

“Does she have that kind of power?”

“She wants that kind of power,” Weaver said. “Whether she has it remains to be seen. I just don't want to see it when you disappear.”

“I don't care. I'm Guardia. Nothing else matters. Look.” He slowed and reached into his pocket and pulled out the AK-47 round. “This is the bullet they couldn't take out because it was too close to my heart, the bullet that was going to kill me any time. I was doomed. This morning it was right under my skin. Popped it out. And the wound healed right away. I have my life back. You think I care about your Ursula?”

Weaver stared at the bullet. “You've had that inside you? Pressing on your heart?
And you didn't tell me?
”

“Uh,” Ethan said, not expecting that.

“You . . .
idiot
,” Weaver said, fuming. “You could have
died
!”

“I know,” Ethan said, cautious now. “But it's out. I'm okay now—”

“No, you're
not.
That's what I'm trying to tell you. Ursula's dangerous.
She's ambitious as all hell and if she can prove demons are real—and whatever powers you Guardia have are real—she'll use it to get more power. She's already brought in muscle to grab you if she decides she wants to. And if you defy her, if you get in her way . . .” She swallowed. “The life you just got back could be over pretty fast.”

Ethan shrugged. “Let her try.” He slowed as they reached the garbage can beside the carousel. “Last night my mother died and we brought her back. Today, I carved my death sentence out of my chest. Somebody up there likes us, and I'm going to keep working to keep it that way. The hell with Ursula and her muscle.” He shoved the can aside and opened the trap door to the tunnels. “You with me?”

Weaver hesitated.

“It's okay,” Ethan said. “I never expected you to risk your career for this.”

“I'm with you,” she said, and climbed down into the tunnel.

 

“A
nd then Ethan took Glenda home, and Frankie and I came here and packed,” Mab said over her waffles as Frankie crunched pistachios on the floor. She was eating cautiously, and so far her stomach was being edgy but cooperative. “We're moving out to the trailers today so you get your guest room back.”

“Oh,” Cindy said. “Well, that'll be . . . nice. So the Guardia thing, it's not hard?”

“We had some problems,” Mab said, and then saw Cindy get tense again. “Nothing we couldn't fix, everything was fine, you can do this. Things got a little screwed up because Ethan insisted on bringing Weaver along—”

“He took a date to a demon battle?” Cindy said. “Oh, wait, it's Ethan. Of course he took a date to a demon battle.”

“Not a date. Remember the man in black who kept shooting him? The man in black was Weaver.”

“I thought it was Johnny Cash.”

“No—”

Glenda rattled the door and Mab went to let her in.

“You have to open up,” Glenda said to Cindy. “People need ice cream.”

“I will,” Cindy said, “as soon as you tell me how to stop making dragons.”

Glenda looked at Mab.

Mab smiled, ignoring her queasy stomach. “Ethan told me that you cast illusions as the Sorceress. Well, when Cindy gets annoyed, she casts an illusion to pay off the person annoying her. Apparently her subconscious communicates in dragons.”

Glenda looked at Cindy. “I didn't know you ever got annoyed. You always seemed so . . . cheery.”

“I repress a lot,” Cindy said.

“Oh.” Glenda sat down on a counter stool. “So, let's start at the beginning. You're part of the Guardia now. The Guardia is—”

“Yeah, Mab told me. I'm the Sorceress, I yell ‘Redimio,' and demons go into chalices, we save the world. She did not mention dragons, though, or what else these powers do, or how I control them.”

“Control them.” Glenda looked confused. “I don't remember them ever getting out of control. I want something to happen, I concentrate on it happening, it happens. It doesn't just happen on its own.”

“Not when you got angry?” Mab said. “I remember you getting pretty angry a couple of times. You must have had . . . thoughts.”

“Yeah,” Glenda said. “But they never became dragons. That's new.”

“Oh, well, that's wonderful,” Cindy snapped, and Mab pulled back a little, surprised.

“I can see why you're . . . upset,” Glenda began.

“Upset?”
Cindy said, and the napkin holder on the counter morphed into a silver dragon about two feet tall and began spitting napkins.

“Oh,” Glenda said, watching it. “That's a problem. Possibly you just need to, uh, control yourself—”

“Don't you people have a handbook or something?” Cindy said. “With a troubleshooting section in the back? Somebody you can
call
?”

“There are old books in the Keep,” Glenda said. “Mab could look around.”

“Sure,” Mab said, and took an incautious bite of her waffle. “I could—”

Her stomach revolted and she ran for the bathroom and lost everything. She splashed water on her face, rinsed her mouth out, and thought,
Just what I needed, flu
. Then she went back to the counter, only to meet two women who were looking at her appraisingly.

“What?” she said.

“Cindy says you have the flu,” Glenda said. “There's no flu going around.”

“Well, I've got something,” Mab said. “Maybe it's from that stuff in the flask you made Ethan give me last night. That was awful.”

Cindy nodded, for the moment back to her old cheerful self. “So I know you've been using condoms, but . . . did anything go wrong?”

“No,” Mab said. “What?
No.
Listen, I'm
careful
.”

“Put your hand on your stomach,” Glenda said.

Mab looked at her warily. “Why?”

“Put your hand on your stomach and see what you see,” Glenda said patiently.

Mab took a deep breath and put her hand on her stomach. Nothing. “I don't think the sight thing works like that—”

A toddler with curly red hair stood there, grinning crookedly up at her, a wicked little baby glint in her green eyes and a green malachite bunny clutched in her fat little hand.

Mab stopped breathing, but Frankie did his rasping coo, and the baby laughed.

“Yeah,” Glenda said, evidently reading the expression on her face. “Girl or boy?”

“Girl,” Mab said faintly, as the baby toddled across the floor, through the door, and out onto the flagstones. Still laughing.

Very happy baby with her malachite bunny warding off evil, the gift of her far-seeing aunt Delpha.

Mab watched her until she was out of sight, her mind folding in on itself. Baby. She was going to have a baby. Baby. Baby, baby, baby.

“Who's the father?” Glenda said.

“Fun. Oh,
god
. My kid's got a demon for a father.” Mab sat down, still floored from the idea that she was going to have a kid, let alone a part-demon kid. “This isn't happening to me.”

Cindy put a cup of tea in front of her. “Peppermint. No caffeine. No dragons.”

Mab looked at the cup. “I got drunk last night. And then Ethan gave me that stuff that made me throw it all up. That could have hurt—”

“Did she look hurt?” Glenda said.

“No, but . . .”

“So back to the problem at hand,” Glenda said, turning back to Cindy. “Maybe if you tried meditation—”

“Hey,” Mab said. “I'm
pregnant
. I'm gonna have a
baby
.”

“In nine months,” Glenda told her. “Cindy has dragons right now. Get in line.” She smiled at Cindy. “So Mab will go to the Keep and find the books and . . . we'll go from there. After she tells fortunes this afternoon.”

“Fortunes?” Mab said. “Oh, hell, the Oracle tent. I forgot.”
What with the baby and all.

“And after you sell ice cream,” Glenda said to Cindy. “This is a park, too, you know. Both of you, get to work.” She looked up at the menu. “I want something that says ‘I almost died and now I'm free.' What have you got?”

“Chocolate,” Cindy said, and went to get her breakfast.

“Was what I saw real?” Mab asked Glenda. “That little girl?”

“Hard telling,” Glenda said. “Maybe it's just what you wish for.”

“Yeah, because I'm so the maternal type,” Mab said, and picked up her tea and walked out the door, her raven on her shoulder and a baby on board.

“So,” she said to Frankie as they hit the midway. “You ever do any babysitting?”

She turned her head and met him eye to eye. He didn't seem enthusiastic.

“Well, you can learn,” she said, and headed for the Oracle booth.

O
nce Ethan and Weaver were in the Keep, they made their way up to the restaurant level, where Ethan paused. The small door built into the drawbridge was open. Looking out, he saw one of the paddleboats tied to the ledge outside.

He drew his gun and led Weaver to the top room of the Keep. He picked up no sense of demon, but that didn't put him at ease. The trapdoor at the top of the stairs leading to the battlement roof was open. He put Tura's chalice on the pentagonal table, indicated for Weaver to cover him, then climbed the stairs, pistol leading.

He popped his head up over the threshold and saw Ray Brannigan, smoking a cigar and staring out at Dreamland, looking like the king of the Keep.

Ethan climbed onto the battlement, and Ray spun about, hand flashing inside his expensive coat. He saw that Ethan had already beaten him to the draw and raised both hands very slightly.

Somehow having a future made Ethan dislike Ray even more. He raised his gun higher.

“Hey, it's just me,” Ray said. “Owner of half the park, remember? I'm allowed to be up here.” He smiled, just pals.

Remember he's the Devil you know
, Ethan told himself.
Don't shoot him.

“Which reminds me,” Ray said. “You have twenty percent of the park. I'll give you half a million for it.” He looked past Ethan at Weaver as she climbed out onto the roof and lost his smile. “I thought I told you to get rid of her.”

“You'll give me your share of the park,” Ethan said. “And then you'll go. I know you were outside Delpha's trailer while she was dying, I know
you sent the demons after Gus, I know you made a deal with the Devil, which just shows how dumb you really are.”

“Listen, you punk, I'm the mayor of this town and half owner of this park, and you do
not
talk to me like that.” Ray took a menacing step forward, and then there was the
thuft
of the D-gun firing, and he staggered back, hit by a demon round slamming into the left side of his coat. Ethan charged forward and did a leg sweep, knocking Ray to the ground. He ripped the demon round off the coat and pulled it back. The round had hit the outside of a leather holster housing a massive Desert Eagle pistol. Ethan pulled it out and handed it to Weaver.